Supreme Bullshit

Well, they are at it again. The spinmasters of this administration have succeeding in denying repeatedly that the Supreme Court's decision has no direct implications, but instead presents an 'unclear' outcome which the administration's lawyers will have to sort out. Of course, this is simply spin, but it's a new level of spin for the Bush administration. They would have you believe that the Supreme Court's decision is something to be debated, interpreted, and 'responded to', rather than something of the last word as it should be constitutionally understood. The fact that the court was called upon to rule on this issue by definition means that this is a final decision about the matters the trial brought out.

This Surpreme Court ruling declares a single point which is a HUGE blow to the policies of Bush and Co. It declares that the detainees, even those members of known terrorist groups, are afforded all the protection of the Geneva convention and due process. This is very interesting, as the 'new legal atmosphere' which the administration keeps talking about having been brought about because of the war on terror is, by their reckoning, outside the Geneva convention. However, this court ruling has declared any violation of the Geneva convention at Gitmo as against the law, including procedures like 'water boarding' know to be used at Gitmo. Thus, your president and his administration have engaged in activities that violate the Geneva convention (because they declared themselves exempt from it's implications...or in a 'new legal atmosphere'), and the court has declared these actions unconstitutional and illegal.

This is a good as it will ever get folks. The court is a stacked court, full of friends of Bush and Co. Yet they still ruled against him. Even if they try to spin this decision as difficult to interpret, and requiring a thorough analysis to respond to, you must not lose sight of what it is. A right wing conservative court has declared Gitmo WRONG. Although they didn't have the guts to go further and outright call for it's closure, this is a good as we can expect from this Supreme court.